Abstract

Recently certain writers have expressed the belief that chemical reactions are to be explained on the basis of the quantum mechanical resonance phenomenon [2]. There are a large variety of different types of chemical reactions, of different degrees of complication, some of which may be too complicated to treat directly by quantum mechanical methods, but some of which are so simple that they have already been treated in more or less detail on the basis of the new mechanics. In this situation it seems desirable to point out the relations between certain reactions, one of which has been considered on the basis of the quantum mechanics, and the others of which have been treated only by classical or old quantum theory methods. We hope later to consider some of these relations in more detail with a view to seeing whether we can make new inferences (even though they must necessarily be of a preliminary nature) about the more complicated reactions.